As in every war, Ukraine is fighting not only with weapons, but also with words. The firing is from large calibers, and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov provided a particularly vile example of this when he established a connection between the Jewish Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Adolf Hitler, who also had “Jewish blood”. Both are Nazis, Lavrov explained, and the “most zealous anti-Semites are often Jews themselves.” The outrage is understandably great, especially in Israel.
Lavrov’s derailment is only the logical continuation of Russian propaganda. Certainly it is particularly perfidious here, because it makes the Jews themselves responsible for their persecution. This is a classic anti-Semitism. But President Vladimir Putin had already set the course at the beginning of the war, when he declared the “denazification” of Ukraine to be the goal. From Moscow’s point of view, “Nazis” are now all those who oppose the Russian actions. The accusation also hit the members of the German Bundestag when they agreed to the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine.
The Nazi and Holocaust comparisons can be heard everywhere again – and the Jewish state, built 74 years ago on the rubble of the Shoah, suddenly feels compelled to clarify something that should actually be self-evident: In sharp words, pull Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett the Russian Foreign Minister of the lie. He should immediately stop exploiting the Nazi era and the Holocaust. He put it very similarly last week in his speech on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day: “No event in history, no matter how cruel it may have been, can be compared to the Holocaust,” he said there. However, this was not addressed to Moscow, but to Kyiv.
The injustice being done to Ukraine stands for itself – no analogies are needed
Because even on the side of the victims, the Ukrainians, the historical comparison is repeatedly attempted in the current war. When President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke to members of the Israeli parliament via video in March, he not only criticized the country for the lack of aid, i.e. arms deliveries. He also compared the Russian actions against Ukraine to those of the Nazis against the Jews. Putin, he explained, also uses the same terminology of the “final solution”.
This certainly speaks to the desperation of the attacked, of the person seeking protection. Zelensky’s comparison has nothing in common with cold and cynical Russian propaganda. There is no lie factory behind this, but the fear of surviving. From an Israeli point of view, however, the analogy is disturbing because, as a statement from the Jerusalem memorial Yad Vashem put it, it ultimately leads to the “trivialization of the Holocaust.”
The Holocaust, with the systematic murder of six million Jews, is an event that defies comparison. Assessing Russia’s culpability for war crimes in Ukraine does not require reference to the Holocaust or showing Putin with a Hitler mustache. Every injustice stands on its own – and is bad enough even without historical comparisons, which should perhaps help to clarify, but lead to distortion.